1. Field of the Invention
An object of the present invention is a device to monitor the content and/or duration of the display of advertisements. It can be applied in active types of display, notably when the display is done through electrical or electronic display devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The problems related to the displaying of advertisements are well known. An advertiser signs a contract with a hoardings company by virtue of which the advertising or display panels belonging to the company display, for a pre-determined time, advertisements praising the merits of the products manufactured or marketed by this advertiser. At the end of the contract, the advertisements are replaced by advertisements from other advertisers. When the hoardings are designed to take posters, one simply sticks a poster for the products of an advertiser on top of a previous advertisement. This handling task is difficult to manage. It requires a great number of workmen who have to be regularly sent to the hoardings to change the posters on them.
Other improved methods of display are known. In these methods, the board has a mechanism to invert the posters shown to the public. The principle of this mechanism is based on the use of two cylinders, placed on either side of the panel, used to show the public various posters relating to different advertisements in succession through a window made in this panel. The posters are wound one after the other alternately on each of the cylinders. The mechanism may even be designed to display each poster for a relatively short period, for about 15 seconds, so as to draw the attention of bystanders. Psychologically, the removal of a poster and its replacement by another one constitutes a little mystery which instinctively attracts attention.
In this system of display, however, there is no real check on the duration of the display. For the duration of the display is quite simply shared, possibly in an unequal way, among the various advertisers who have subscribed to the display of their products through this method of display. When their contract of hire is over, the cylinders or rollers have to be dismantled and the strip containing the various advertisements wound around it have to be removed. This strip is then replaced by another strip of advertisements corresponding to advertisements paid for by other advertisers. In practice, the intervals at which the content of the rollers is modified is the same as the intervals at which posters are stuck onto hoardings: often about one week. This modification too entails difficult handling operations.
An object of the invention is to overcome these handling problems while proposing a display system which can provoke the interest of bystanders through the appearance and disappearance of the displayed messages. According to the principle of the invention, the period for which a poster is displayed on a hoarding or display panel is linked to the duration of a telephone communication between two participants, at least one of whom is in a public telephone booth near this display panel. According to a preferred approach, the telephone booth has a telephone with a till to take an electronic pre-payment card and is further provided with means to tap information stored in additional memory zones of these cards and to display this information on a display panel which is functionally linked to this telephone booth. This display panel may be an integral part of the booth.